The Batlord

No you were just in disheveled sandwich board guy mode.

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OccultHawk

A lot of those guys have beards.

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2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Member of the Year & Journal of the Year Champion

Behold the Writing of THE LEGEND:

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The Batlord

You know it would be really unwoke of me to say that elph is your beard, so I won't.

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debaserr

Yes, people don't understand the concept anymore.

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Last.FM

jwb

Sorry for not detecting the satire LF.

You're still a retard but so am I.

Psy-Fi

Biden accuser Tara Reade slams Dems for Bill Clinton convention speech

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She's a Brick House

SGR

You may be right about the level of alientation between the US and Iran, it's hard to tell because our relationship with them has been historically negative. I'd still say that the Iranian hostage crisis represented a period of greater alienation than we have now. I know that Iraq has basically become a political battleground in which the US and Iran wage influence campaigns in opposition of each other since around the time when Saddam was toppled. You could be right that Soleimani's killing will embolden Iran and deteriorate US influence, since (as far as I know), Iraq viewed it as an uncalled for act-of-aggression. I know we deployed thousands of troops to the Middle East when the killing occurred and that we maintain tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East still. Whether or not our troop presence will prove a bulwark against Iranian influence is unknown to me.

You talk about tensions not escalating in reality like a movie but you described the relationship between the UAE and Israel as 'no lack of peace between them'. I get where you're coming from - there's no declared war or military engagements, but when one country was calling for the arrest of another country's intelligence agency director, labelling them a murderer, and not letting any citizens of aforementioned country enter through their border, I wouldn't necessarily describe that as peaceful. I would describe it however as an incremental escalation of tensions. This peace deal, though not some magic panacea to broader problems in the Middle East, takes things in the right direction by normalizing relations and lifting travel restrictions (including direct flights between the countries).

I agree that the Iran Deal is something worth preserving, at least in regards to its goals. The only logical reason (that I can think of) for pulling out is to restructure the deal to make it more beneficial to us. This requires maximum pressure on Iran to make them capitulate. Republican and Democrat administrations have both said they'd use military force to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. Iran knows this, and they'd risk political isolation (or worse) if they went ahead anyway. As far as I understand it, Iran is in a bad place right now with coronavirus and their economy has been shuttered by sanctions. I think they will choose to negotiate rather than pursue the bomb as some kind of political leverage. That negotiation will only likely happen after the election, since they're likely going to wait to see if there's a change of power and a change of possibilities here in the US.

As for Syria, things were handled badly in regards to Turkey. We could've done more to prevent what happened. But if our goal is to wait until there won't be any war/fighting, destruction, or power vacuums before we leave the Middle East, we'll be there forever. At some point, we have to recognize diminishing returns, cut our losses, and walk our ass back home, like we did when we left Saigon. Let Bashar al-Assad fight his battle with Turkey.

I'm all for giving Tara Reade the benefit of the doubt - but I haven't kept up with this story. Has anyone else?

Is there any reason to think she's not credible? Has any detail that she's provided been proven wrong?

Lucem Ferre

I thought the picture of blueface throwing money at desperate homeless people was a clever analogy.

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Art Is Dead. Buy My ****.

Anteater

I think the bigger question is - what genius at the DNC thought it was a good idea to make Bill Clinton the keynote speaker?

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SGR

It was probably Joe Biden's idea. Takes all the heat off of him in regards to the sexual misconduct allegations. 4D Chess.